Susan Conard

Background

About Susan Conard

Susan G. Conard holds a BA in environmental studies from Antioch College and completed her PhD in ecology at the University of California, Davis in 1980. Dr. Conard’s fire research career started in graduate school, where she studied fire effects and vegetation dynamics in white fir forests in the Sierra Nevada and in chamise chaparral in the California Coast Range. She worked as a fire researcher and research project leader at the US Forest Service Riverside Fire Lab from 1983 to 1996, where she focused on California chaparral and forest ecosystems. From 1996 through 2008 she was the Forest Service National Program Leader for Fire Ecology Research in the Washington, D.C. office. While there she worked on program development (National Fire Plan and Joint Fire Science Program) and oversight in collaboration with Forest Service researchers and fire management staff and with other agencies. By 1996 her research had shifted to Siberia, and her collaboration with Russian and North American colleagues are ongoing. Her wildland fire research focus has evolved over time, with an emphasis on integration across scales and disciplines, including fire regimes and fire effects, fire behavior, and remote sensing. She is interested in interactions between fire and changing climate and recently taught a 6-week introductory course on climate change at the Belfast, Maine Senior College. She currently holds an Affiliate Faculty position at George Mason University. Dr. Conard is a past president of the International Boreal Forest Research Association, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science She has been co Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Wildland Fire since her retirement in late 2008. She has over 75 publications.